Rogue Like Treasure #2
THE EARLY GAMES
DND
No polyhedral dice required
To understand where roguelike games come from you have to go back to 1970s and a social game called Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). D&D was the seminal RPG, drawn from the fantasy writings of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, and Fritz Lieber. The D&D world created a place for players to live out an alternate identity while encountering mythic monsters and enchanted artifacts. The whole experience was moderated by the “Dungeon Master”, who populated the game world and its dungeons as well as controlling all characters and events apart from the players. (In roguelike games, the computer becomes the Dungeon Master.) And it was D&D that inspired the first roguelike game, the appropriately named DND.
In DND you create a character with the same 6 primary statistics as in D&D - strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. The D&D system proved to be a popular foundation, so we will see it again and again in the roguelikes that follow. Also like D&D, your character could be one of three basic classes - Fighter, Magician, or Cleric.
Once the basics of character creation are done, you select which of several dungeons you will enter to battle monsters and collect treasure. The creatures, spells, and equipment are straight out of D&D. (The monsters are even referred to as being of a particular “level”, which in the original D&D indicates their comparative toughness.) Movement occurs in big jumps on a stylised map of the dungeon, and you come across creatures, items, and traps in individual one-on-one encounters. Play feels rather formalised and mechanical, and the game doesn’t provide basic functions like mapping so you need to draw the maps yourself. It doesn’t show spell lists or information about monsters either, so you’ll also want the D&D guidebooks on hand when you play.
This is what “color graphics” once meant.
A commercial derivative of DND called Telengard was published for PCs by wargame mavens Avalon Hill. This game removes some of the complexity of the original, for example by making all players a kind of Fighter/Magician, but it is a bit easier to control. It also adds the dubious pleasure of animated graphics in the hideous four-color palette of CGA mode. An amusing variant, but more limited in scope than the original.
Rogue
From me all things flow…
The next game to come along, and the one which the whole genre is named after, is Rogue. Something of a mixed bag, Rogue was both a step forward and a step back from DND.
Rogue is in many ways a simpler game than DND. There is no character creation to speak of, and you only have a few basic attributes like strength and hitpoints. However, there are numerous improvements which set it apart from DND, changes which became essential features later roguelikes would be expected to include.
One of the improvements is the addition of a genuine inventory for the player. Multiple potions, weapons, armors, and other goodies can be carried, and you decide when each item is equipt or used. The inventory is a vital addition for managing your character as an expansive catalogue of items becomes available.
Regarding items, Rogue also instituted another tradition that would perpetuate through later games. This is the concept of “flavored” unidentified items. Many items when found are unknowns to the player, beyond their obvious type (a sword, a potion, an amulet). Rogue adds a “flavor” to some item types to distinguish each from another unidentified item of the same type but with a different effect. For example, unknown potions will be flavored by their color (”you find a blue potion”), or scrolls by the magical gibberish written on them (”you have a scroll of ‘ety brol uj zoi’”). The item’s true nature is revealed upon use, which can lead to a new crisis (”a potion of confusion”) or last-minute salvation (”a scroll of healing”). Weapons and armor likewise remain unidentified, so you never quite know if you are carrying an enchanted blade or a cursed sword until spell of Identify is read over it. Some items can even be named by the player, and all can be “inscribed” with shortcut keystrokes for easy use.
The biggest change in Rogue however is the dungeon itself. Gone is the abstracted environment of DND and in its place is a series of rooms joined by hallways. Each dungeon level takes up one screen and the player moves one space at a time through this grid-like world. Ranged weapons and spells fly through the open spaces, items litter the floors, and creatures move about as they attack or flee. The end result is a far more immersive experience, and one that has been imitated and improved in the years since.
Like DND with Telengard, Rogue would also enjoy a commercial release. Published by Epyx and involving some of the original Rogue creators, this version stayed faithful to the freely-available original. Color was added and a more graphical text font used, but the overall experience remains the same. This version has since been emulated and ported by other developers as well, and is probably the preferrable version to play if you can find it for your platform (and if you can cope with the replacement of the player’s @ symbol with a smiley face).
Moria
Welcome to the town with no name.
The next major roguelike game to come along took the basic formula of Rogue and expanded it in just about every direction. It wrapped deeper layers of the D&D and Tolkien source materials around the Rogue experience, and improved the game engine in myriad ways. The game is called The Dungeons Of Moria, though most people just call it Moria now.
The first thing you’ll find when starting a game of Moria is that there are many more options for creating your character. No longer are you restricted to playing a human adventurer, but now you can elect to be from one of eight fantasy races, such as Elf or Dwarf. There are a greater variety of player classes to choose from, six in all, including such D&D stand-bys as Warrior, Mage, and Ranger. The six core attributes from D&D (and DND) make a welcome return, and intrinsic skills like Combat and Searching appear as well. You can even choose whether to be male or female, and while this has no statistical effect on your character, it helps reinforce the roleplaying aspect. Also adding to character flavor is the random “past and appearance” that is generated at creation time. Just like real life, in Moria you can’t choose your family or your looks, but you can try to make the best of what you’ve got.
The next significant change from Rogue comes once you’re done creating your persona. Instead of being dropped straight into the fray, you’ll find yourself in a small town. Six basic shops like the General Store and the Weaponsmith buy and sell the items you’ll need along your quest. And a quest it is, for just like its namesake, there’s a Balrog waiting to be vanquished at the bottom of this Moria as well. This kind of overarching quest will appear again in later games, as it’s a great mechanism for giving a driving narrative to the game, however basic.
Once you enter the dungeons, you’ll discover more modifications to the Rogue world. Moria gives you more room to play, with dungeon layouts that sprawl across several screens. Levels are also “volatile”, in that their layout changes whenever you leave them and they become restocked with monsters, items and traps. This makes it possible to repeat levels so that you can build yourself up more for the final confrontation. But ever-changing floorplans also mean losing dropped items and hunting for staircases.
Moria can be seen as an evolutionary step in roguelike games, widening the gaming experience by a large degree. It influenced most roguelikes which followed, and had a couple important descendants as well. The first is called Druid, a game employing some of the notable post-Moria enhancements. For one thing, the game is now in color, which makes spotting different monster types and item varieties much easier. It also includes the “autoroller”, which allows you to influence your preferred character attributes up front so that you get a character more suited to the class you want to play. And speaking of classes, Druid adds a new one (can you guess what?) - the Druid, a character who is a mix of Mage and Priest and thus armed with both magic and holy prayers. Moria’s other significant offspring, Angband, is one we’ll come back to later.
Hack
Must…not…loot…
I would like to briefly mention another roguelike here, one called Hack. It is very similar to Rogue, being derived directly from it. About the only major change you’ll notice at first is that you start the game in a shopping menu where you can buy starting items for your character. Otherwise it’s largely indistinquishable from playing Rogue. It is worth mentioning this game however as it would later give birth to NetHack. NetHack is the biggest contender with the Angband games for “most popular roguelike”. And as Angband has its genesis in Moria, so NetHack starts out humbly as Hack.
Larn
Look at all the goodies! Enlightenment rules!
The last of the early roguelikes we’ll discuss is a unique entry called The Caves Of Larn, or just plain Larn to its friends. Larn, like Moria, uses the standard D&D six attributes system. However, there is no character creation per se. Instead you begin as an explorer with straight 12’s in all your attributes. These attributes can be improved during play, and you can customize your character further by spending time and money at the College Of Larn.
Also like Moria, you have a primary quest in this game. The quest is more personal here, as you are entering the dungeon to find a rare potion which will cure your ailing daughter. This is a time-critical quest as you might expect, though you will occassionally find magic to rewind the hands of time, thereby giving you a few more precious turns.
Larn offers a world map, similar in some ways to the Moria town. There are a couple shops, the entrance to the dungeon, a bank, the LRS tax office, and the aforementionded College Of Larn. There is also an entrance to a volcanic shaft, which leads to a much deadlier dungeon. Time continues to tick away with each move above ground as well, so you’ll need to take care of business and get back into the depths smartish.
The dungeons themselves are quite different than in previous roguelikes. Instead of a series of rooms connected by halls, each Larn level is a single screen labyrinth. The levels contain the usual staircases, but only occassionally doors, which typically lead into a lair-like room full of monsters and treasure. Levels also contain special features like fountains (which can be drunk from or bathed in), altars (which you can pray at, tithe to, or desecrate), thrones, pits, statues, and mirrors. Levels also remain consistent as you pass between them, which is important as you don’t have time to spare in re-exploring them.
The total experience of playing Larn is a significant change from the other roguelikes, and the differences are largely positive. It remains something of a minority interest in the roguelike community today, and has few follow-up games. The most notable is ULarn, which adds a few new features and some simple character classes, but otherwise it is no major depature from the original Larn. Give either version a try if you’ve only played the better known roguelike games, or if you’d like to enjoy something different.
